annexedmeme | Test Drive Meme #3

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!test drive meme

Test Drive Meme #3

Test Drive Info

⇝ Test Drive Memes take place in a virtual reality simulation occurring in characters' minds that tests them for 'fitness' before they enter the setting officially. Because it is set in a simulation created by the Sylphid, the missions, while being comparable to regular missions in the game, will be from a Sylphid perspective.
⇝ Characters will not be chipped during the simulation, and will have access to their abilities from canon, but will be chipped upon waking for the rescue.
⇝ Current characters can easily be pulled into the simulation if they are sleeping and dreaming when it's happening. The Sylphid cast a wide net with the simulation to fill it out with characters to interact with for prospective new arrivals.
⇝ Test Drive Meme threads may be considered game canon so long as all parties agree to it.
⇝ Test Drive Meme threads do count for Activity Check.

i. Awakening

It happens in a dream. You fall asleep and the next moment you feel like you're awakening again, but without any exhaustion, as if you've had a full night's sleep. You find yourself in a comfortable bed in a room full of comfortable beds, all of which contain other people waking up just the way you are. The room is large but cozy, with wide windows that are framed by light curtains, and the sun is shining in from an angle that suggests morning.

Once you're up and moving around a little, ready to explore this new place, you'll discover an open door on one of the walls in the room, through which soft strains of music can be heard, and above which there's a sign saying "Free Breakfast." Once you make your way into the room, possibly with some of the other people just waking up in this strange place, you find a buffet table loaded with breakfast foods - some familiar, and some strange, mainly featuring mushrooms and root vegetables. Quiet, soothing music is playing and there are a variety of tables with chairs available to settle down and enjoy some food.

This is just a dream, right? What could be the harm in eating a bit of food, maybe trying out some cool alien cuisine, and getting to know the other people here?

ii. The Mission: The Fungus Among Us

Once everyone has eaten their fill and gotten to know their new compatriots a little better, there is an interruption in the music playing in the room. Three musical chimes sound, and a pleasant female voice speaks.

Attention, new recruits! We have a mission for you.

The intercom goes on to explain that there is a forest of mushrooms called The Troop that borders on the northwest walls of the city, which releases spores near constantly (though more prolific in fall) that have a hallucinogenic effect on sentient beings. These spores can cause people traveling in The Troop to become disoriented and confused, experience vivid auditory and visual hallucinations, and become permanently lost. Generally, the spores aren't a problem inside the city or in the surrounding area because no one has built close enough to the Troop to suffer serious effects. However, this particular fall, the spore count has been significantly higher than previous years, and spores are making their way into the neighborhoods bordering The Troop. Even worse, the spores are having a slightly different effect on top of the usual ones.

The spores, once inhaled, are growing into microscopic fungi that populate in the brains of citizens and take over the brains of the infected. Once taken over, the citizens who are infected are servants of The Troop, and will do whatever they can to infect others by whatever means possible, whether it's by capturing spores and releasing them in people's faces or by gagging up fungi that will infect others. Beyond that, there is a kind of mania about the people who have been infected - they are wide-eyed and high-energy, they will accost random people with spores or fungi, they will chase people down on the street to infect them.

Beyond that, there's another effect. Those inflicted with fungal infection become distinctly lacking in any kind of verbal filter. They will say exactly what they're thinking, they will blurt out secrets, expose themselves emotionally, and share their innermost thoughts and dreams. After all, it's not like the individual mushrooms in The Troop keep secrets, they're all part of a larger whole, and that's how infected individuals will behave. It's as if they're sharing a consciousness, taken over by the hive mind of The Troop, and see others as simply extensions of themselves.

Will your character get infected, try to help the infected somehow, or just plain stay out of the way of all this madness?

iii. The Mission: Full Fungal Smackdown

As the infection gradually progresses, those who are infected start to become more violent, which is a big problem. The infection is slowly spreading throughout the low-income neighborhood that it initiated in and moving toward the city proper, with increasingly aggressive infected doing their best to infect others. Their methods are starting to become more aggressive as well, where before they would simply spray others with spores or present them with mushrooms, they are now altering common devices like leaf blowers to spread the spores over a broader area and violently attacking people to shove mushrooms into people's mouths, curling fingers inside their mouths to force the fungi into their victims' sinuses and infect them.

It isn't just infection techniques that are getting more aggressive. Their behavior in general is aggressive - the infected are starting fights, are attacking people, often shouting in a strange, unintelligible language. The tone of the attack is that of people defending their own territory, fighting off intruders or predators, even if the person they're attacking made no moves to strike first. Attackers may fight hand-to-hand or even employ weapons that they are familiar with to attack others, whether it's guns, knives, laser swords, or anything else they might use in their regular uninfected life. Even those who were non-combatants will use kitchen knives or other makeshift weapons to attack the uninfected.

They never attack the infected, somehow they seem to know immediately who is and who isn't part of the hivemind.

As the attacks start to really escalate and there is panic in the streets, characters will be informed that a cure for the infection has been found, and everyone who isn't infected should stop by one of the Sylphid trucks carrying syringes of the cure and load up. Anyone who's able to fight, or even who is just capable of carrying and using a syringe, is asked to take a bandeau of them and to inoculate anyone infected. Unfortunately, though, the only real way to tell if someone is infected is by that wide-eyed look, and the attack that comes out of nowhere.

iv. Welcome to the Broken World.

The simulation is over, and you don't even know how you got here from there.

All you know is that one moment you were participating in a mission to save the Sylphid children, to uphold peace talks, and then you were asleep again, after the mission was over.

You wake up in what seems like the blink of an eye, nauseous and dizzy but otherwise unscathed, possessions taken away, barefoot and dressed only in a set of plain grey clothing, like the most bland uniform ever imagined, in an empty room with empty walls and one single door with a small barred window and a single number printed just above it. The door is locked and cannot be broken by any means, you can feel your connection with any superhuman powers you had severed, leaving them just out of reach - you can feel them there, tingling at your fingertips or in the back of your brain, but you just can't get to them. There is no one to greet you or explain what's happening. You start to lose track of time, the only sound the distant ticking of what sounds like a massive clock.

Just when things seem hopeless, when you feel like you're about to go mad, there's the sound of a commotion outside your door. The sounds of a battle, or perhaps an infiltration gone just slightly wrong. Either way, when the door opens, there is a figure there with a hand outstretched.

"Welcome to the Broken World. Come on, we'll explain everything just as soon as we get you and the others out of here."

NAVIGATION

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Damn. She was really hoping for a shared dream. Those were something she'd heard of, something they could've worked with. Instead he has no name for her beyond Li and she has no knowledge of him beyond what he's said to her. They're as clueless now as when they started speaking.

A thought occurs to her. Without a pause to let him stop her, she takes her knife and makes a cut on her wrist, under the edge of the glove. The pain confirms it's real, and she swear softly in Mandarin. "This is real." It's less a statement of discovery and more one of resignation. They've got no way out but through, now.

She cleans her knife on her skirt and wipes her gloves on her blazer, trying to keep both free of any lingering slickness. The battle isn't over. It is once again time to face down the unknown. At least this time they had each other from the start rather than meeting mid-fight. Two can face a lot that one cannot. And while she doubts they can save everyone, she knows they can save some.

"Go for the joints," Li says. "Elbows, knees, they're all still as sensitive as before. It's easier to take them down that way than normal people because they're swinging wildly. Up high or down low confuses them. I've rolled under at least a dozen without any problem. We're not as well armed as I'd like, but we're learning. We can do this, together."

Still, something has her pausing, hesitating to step up onto the ledge like before. Softly, she admits, "Xiaohu. My birth name is Xiaohu. If we meet outside of this city, somehow, say it to me, so I'll know it's you, and I'll know this wasn't a dream. We'll both know, that way. Okay?"

While the thought had occurred to him, Donatello wasn't so eager to go inflicting pain on himself and using the knife had never crossed his mind. "Wait, what are you-" he starts, though he already figures it out even before she's cut a neat little line. He can only go by her response, a confirmation dashing any remaining hopes that there might yet be a way out of this.

The turtle teen sucks in a breath between his teeth, rolling his shoulders back as he nods. Back into the fight it is, then. "Thankfully they don't seem to be trained fighters, but that also makes them dangerous in how unpredictable their movements are," he nods, making mental note of her advice. "We don't need to beat them, we just need to slow them down. If you still have any of the cure on you, use it if you find an opening."

Having someone on the same page as him at least helps to calm him. She's right. They can do it together. They didn't really have much choice.

"Xiaohu?" Donatello blinks up at her before giving her a nod as he commits it to memory. "Okay."

He hops up onto the ledge beside her. "Time for round two."

She shrugs at him, expression wordlessly conveying 'well, one of us had to try it'. Might as well have been her. At least this position for a cut doesn't leave it apt to do more than get matted to the inside of her glove, which is hardly something she'll even notice in the midst of all this chaos.

Li tries hard not to imagine what it'd be like to fight this many people if they had any kind of experience. "I've seen some improvising weapons. That's a danger in and of itself; we can't predict what they might have on hand. That'll make it necessary to drop some of them in order to stay alive." There's no ideal rendition of this where no one dies. That much, she accepted going into it. "If we don't have openings to use the cure, we can slow them by putting obstacles in their way. They're bad at climbing - mindlessness and something that requires hand-eye coordination don't go well together."

They're a decent team. She's more used to taking commands than being part of the planning, but it's nice, honestly, to be able to contribute to this part of proceedings.

"Pan Xiaohu. But Li Ya-Jing, now. It's... complicated. Too long of a story to get into now, definitely." Not the time, not the place, and also, not really something she even knows how to talk about. That's a problem for future Li to deal with, assuming future Li survives this in order to exist.

She looks around, red eyes regaining their glow in the direct sunlight. "There's people hiding to the west, in a bodega. They used the metal gate shops use to keep burglars out to keep infected out, and then I drew all the attackers away from them when I ran past. There's probably a lot of people stranded hiding down there like that. Should we start with getting them out?"

"Not quite mindlessness. If they're all connected through this Troop hivemind then they're just simply being driven with one directive. The how's are all secondary so long as it gets things done. Honestly this would be a lot easier if we could just disrupt whatever kind of signal they're broadcasting by but I suspect that's probably going to be along the lines of some kind of psychic connection."

Donatello seems a little calmer as he has something to explain. It helps him put his mind in order and at least thinking in such a way is something he still has control over, even if they're not going to be possible to carry out.

Complicated... He can understand complicated. Getting into his origins would dip into complicated pretty easily. He offers a nod. "Maybe over tea or coffee later," he proposes, not really serious but he's just trying to lighten up the heavy situation they've been shouldering.

Following her look then, he tips his goggles down, trying to get a better read on the location she mentions, but there's a lot of buildings between there and them. Donnie turns his attention back to her, nodding. "Sounds as good a place as any. I'll follow your lead."

"Hiveminds impact hand-eye coordination, then. Good to know, in case I ever have to have a fight like this a second time." She's not hoping for it, though, nor does it seem likely. This kind of thing doesn't happen back home. The threats to humanity there have the good sense to stay in the shadows where they can't be easily found out and stopped.

Li is surprisingly calm in the face of this. That might be, she reflects, because of her training. Neutralize targets, move civilians to safety, avoid being hit, it's more familiar than it is strange. If she focuses on that this is fine. A surprising number of things can be fine, if she's in the right mindset.

She physically can't discuss her origins. Years of conditioning have made her mind and body both react poorly to it. But the idea of tea after this soundly heavenly. Just something warm, somewhere quiet and a moment to breathe. It's a joke, but it's a lovely mental image regardless. "I'm not into coffee. I'll take you up on the tea, though."

The climb down to the ground would be fastest, but with the possibility of infected down there, the safest way to get to their destination is roof-hopping. Li is better at that than her physique suggests, though the spacing between buildings here is bigger than back in China. Once they get to the building closest to their desired location, Li deftly, near-silently climbs down the fire escape so she won't have to jump onto the ground from the second story, then jumps off it to the ground, rolling into the landing to avoid putting strain on her knees. Instinctively she tenses, listening for any sound of infected in the alley. Fortunately, none are visible or audible - not that there's no chance of them being there, but the majority, at least, have vacated the area, lured away by Li's earlier run through the area.

Equally instinctively, some civilians step back from her. She's a dark-clad, blood-splattered figure with glowing red eyes, and while it's clear from the way she moves and acts that she's not infected, that's not as minor a factor to them as it is to Donnie. Not everyone is enlightened on this topic. In an ideal situation, she'd like to have had time to put her color contacts in. This is, among many other descriptors, not ideal.

"I'm here to help," she says, approaching with her hands up to try to make herself look a bit less threatening. "You can't stay here indefinitely. You need to move."

No one looks convinced. Li turns to Donatello, hoping he'll have some insight on this. She's no good with people.

"Ah, I'd still treat it on a case-by-case basis. If they were ordered to attack us rather than spread their influence, I think things would be a lot worse." In this case at least their attention was spread than focused on specific targets.

Tea preference, then. Donnie files that away. It's nice to think there'll be a chance of some semblance of normal after they deal with this. Right now, they've got a mission. No big deal, nothing really new- it's just that the team-ups got swapped around. It's fine. This is totally fine.

As it turns out, rooftop hopping isn't something foreign to Donatello, and he keeps up rather well as Li takes them towards the location she'd recalled. He drops down not long after her, opting to push off the wall and catch an adjacent windowsill before he lands. Without being told to he's already taken to watching out for any signs of their situation changing while Li goes to address the sheltering civilians. He's still listening though, and the lack of any sounds of the barred security fencing being moved doesn't really sound like things are going well. Donnie looks back then, frowning to himself. He casts one more look about before stepping over to the bodega entrance.

It's not like he's exactly used to dealing with people directly, and Leo's always been the self-proclaimed face man. Hopefully he can appeal to their reasoning, even though he knows that sometimes under such circumstances, common sense is usually the first casualty.

"Look, she's right. It's clear at the moment and we've sealed up a number of the spore-infected people, but there's still others roaming around. If there's a better place to shelter until things get under control, then you all need to move now. Get what you think you might need and go. We'll make sure no one touches you."

Her sigh is genuine. "Please, Guanyin, intervene on our behalves. Once is enough." Once is more than enough, actually. And she'd be willing to bet on this not being possible back home. No one she knows has the self-restraint not to have used it if it did. Li would love for this to be a one-off, especially in terms of location. Invoking a Bodhisattva probably most accurately conveys her feelings on the matter.

Tea, some red bean buns, some music in the background - a nice normal night after a long day's work. Nothing her handlers wouldn't have given her for exemplary performance, nothing fancy, just a reward for putting up with all this. Between the infected hordes, the wary people and the abduction, they've earned it.

He keeps up admirably. That he's done this before is obvious. With her gloves still a little slick with blood, she doesn't risk using the windowsill like he opted for, even though it'd be the better option otherwise. Donatello has clearly worked well in teams before, given the way he lingers behind for a second, making sure there's no threats before proceeding. He knows how to have someone's back. Li appreciates that. Still, she'd assumed her relatively human appearance would've made her a better choice for approaching other humans. The response, though, makes sense when she realizes everything that's been attacking them for the duration of this hellish day also looked human.

Donatello's appearance seems to break the unspoken consensus that this might be a trap of some kind. He doesn't look infected, even if Li's bloody appearance is a bit less neutral under the circumstances. Hesitantly, after some internal debates, the people raise the gates, gather their things - mostly water, Li notices, probably because that's harder to find in a pinch than food - and start walking towards the same direction the fleeing people had gone earlier, murmuring amongst each other uneasily.

Li's first thought is that these people need to walk faster. Her second, which she voices, is, "Should one of us stay at the head of the group and one at the back? Cover both sides in case of any attacks?"

It's a strange irony, but Donatello's just glad the people are finally coaxed from their hiding place. At the moment it's too early to say what's more difficult, directly addressing the problem or protecting those suffering in its wake. Both have their uncertainties, but he's beginning to see the slow burn in taking this route, unknowing as to when this seeming calm will be disrupted.

The number of people that emerge are a lot more than Donatello had anticipated. Speed definitely is of the essence and his thoughts are right alongside Li's in that realization.

"Probably a good idea," he agrees as Li makes her suggestion. "You want front or back?" At least they wouldn't be expected to lead the way. The only real problem was hoping that the way was clear, but thankfully any threats would be restricted to being on foot, and the spores were limited to what they could control.

Everything about today is strange. That might as well extend to this. At least no one's insisting on taking anything impractical with them, no hauls of unneeded snacks or something that might slow them down any further than they're already going. Really, it's not the slog of getting to the safehouse that's her concern. The problem is that there's more infected out there, and she knows she and Donatello didn't get rid of all of them.

People were crammed into the only available hiding spot. That makes sense. It also would stand to reason that in other little stores in this area, other places with anti-theft gates might hold similar groups of people. They'll address that as they go through the commercial district, bit by bit. They'll probably end up going back, grabbing more people and repeating this trip a few times before the night is over.

"I'll take the front. You have the tech it takes to fly to the front in an emergency, and I was trained to look forward for incoming threats more than I was to look behind me." She trusts him to watch her back and the back of the group. She does not want to risk high-value assets she's moving (which is how she has to think about this in order to stay focused) by putting herself in a position she wasn't trained for. "Yell for me if you need me."

Depending on the route they all take, there's the chance that others might join them. That would make things more complicated even while it made things easier. It's just another bridge they'll have to cross if they get to it.

Donatello had a feeling that Li would opt for the front, and he's not going to argue the assessments made there. Truthfully he's a little relieved to be tasked with bringing up the rear. He's not used to taking point.

"You do the same if things start looking bad," he says, nodding at her. Not that he wishes for anything to go bad, but at least they know they can count on each other if things do. He hopes his expression comes off as brave and not anxious as he steps back, waiting for the rest of the people to file past until the last person goes by.

He doesn't look unduly anxious. Some degree of apprehension is probably wise. No one should be relaxed or casual under the circumstances. Li isn't used to taking point - it's the opposite of how she normally operates - but she trusts in his competency and knows he can handle half the work of this.

The crowd does tries for some semblance of speed, and Li finally gets it out of them where they're headed: north, uptown, uphill. Not as specific as she'd like but at least something, and it gives her an idea of how she'll know when they've started getting close to where they need to. How long it'll take, no one is sure. The cars clogging the road force everyone to use the relatively clear sidewalks, which means there's only so fast they can move. At least everyone seems to understand the value of staying quiet; murmurs and whispers are low, no one shouts, and any protests to having Li and Donatello as their guards are kept to their heads and left unvoiced.

The peace feels fragile, though. It's a spun-glass peace built to shatter. Li doesn't quite trust it.

The quiet is actually unsettling. Donnie doesn't trust it either. Cities shouldn't be this quiet. He tries to reassure himself that it's due to most of the chaos happening elsewhere and fortunately not in their immediate vicinity, or that maybe they had in fact managed to entrap the majority of the infected spreaders who had made it deeper into the city. But these are all theories at best, and you couldn't sleep soundly on those.

At the back of the group he feels exposed, but he has a feeling being at the front would be no different. There's too many blind corners, too many openings between his point and Li's. There's not much to do but to keep an eye out and ears open for any sounds. If there's at least one thing to be thankful of, it's that the infected aren't subtle.

Donatello slows to a stop. He's sure he's heard something, a familiar sound that makes no sense in the quiet of an evacuation. His grip tightening around his bo, he turns, scanning the streets behind them, eyeing the intersections warily. There's that sound again, the idling start-up putter of a motor. Behind it he can start to hear the low murmur of voices, nothing intelligible, but they're still a distance off to really be made out. Slowly he starts to back up, unwilling to turn completely just yet.

He catches the movement behind the haphazard blockade of cars, sucking in a breath as his fears are verified. The listless sway of the people that come into view, the random array of objects clutched in their stained hands- they aren't too many but the moment they catch sight of the group ahead, they start to rush. One of them hauls up a handheld leaf blower, revving it up.

"Oh no, they've found us. Keep moving-" Donnie barks over his shoulder. He leaps up onto one of the cars in the street, watching the incoming people as he slides into a defensive stance.

Quiet is the gap, Li has learned, inbetween lightning and thunder. Things have echoes, even odd events like this, and there is no way for calm to ever truly last. The only place she's ever felt any true lasting peace in at the temple to Guanyin in Suzhou. That, though, was different. Finding safety solo is infinitely easier than finding safety for an entire group, especially one so large.

There's no warning for her from the front about what's happening. With so many people murmuring inbetween her and Donatello, there's noise that blocks out anything from the back. There's only a vague, lingering sense in the back of her head that everything is going too well, coupled with the nagging certainty that they're going to lose someone. Nothing within her says that they're going to get the whole group through without fatalities. Back home, if she could work in a group, if they weren't just two people... but here and now, they're all that's available. The other people who were there at that strange breakfast earlier, who responded when the announcement sounded, are scattered over too wide a landmass to be contacted.

So when Donatello shouts, Li whirls around, instantly on alert. Running towards the nearest alley, she jumps onto the fire escape and undoes the latches, sending the ladder crashing to the ground. The only thing that she's found that's held true so far is that the infected can't get on rooftops. With that limited intel, the best thing she can do is get everyone off the ground and up out of harm's way. Even as horror and panic cross the eyes of people in the group, Li is directing them, in a voice that allows for no argument, "Up! Everyone get up, now! They can't get you if you're not down here to get! Up!"

Someone hands her a child to carry and she climbs up the sides of the ladder until she can swing herself up onto the next landing, then sprints up the stairs to deposit him before clambering back down, a trip she finds herself expected to repeat as she's handed another child. Even in the depths of desperation, even when death is staring them down, even with Li's bloodstained and eerie appearance, people will prioritize their children over everything else. She hauls herself up and throws herself down with increasing speed and urgency, barely having finished coming out of the roll she instinctively does to shed momentum from jumping down before she's handed another child. All the while the adults swarm up the stairs, frantic, no longer remotely quiet, audibly panicked. That racket is almost definitely going to draw more attention. She shuts her mind off and focuses only on the task at hand.

All the while she knows she needs to provide backup for Donatello. Li is aware she can't leave him to do all the defensive work himself. She also can't be in two places at once. If she let herself think this would be frustrating to the point of making her want to scream. So she simply doesn't think. She only acts. Transfer high-vulnerability assets to the safe zone, remove entry point to the safe zone for attackers below by grabbing the ladder and locking it in a fully upward position disconnected from the ground, then assist co-combatant.

She has tranquilizers her from home. Those are flammable. She has a lighter. The buildings nearby are all varying kinds of rock or brick, not prone to burning. Were she still thinking, she would seek out approval from Donatello before doing what she does next. She is not thinking. Li is not a thinker. She is a Creature.

Vaulting from one fire escape to another to the one-story roof of the building nearest the encroaching horde, Li takes off her jacket, pours the all of the tranq onto the fabric of the torso, and takes a running start to jump off the side of the building, crashing into one of the infected who breaks her landing well enough. The pain that spikes through her is ignored. No feeling, only action. Li takes out the lighter, sets the jacket on fire and whips it around in semi-circles at encroaching infected. The spores are flammable (albeit not as much as she would have hoped for) and whatever drives infected does not drive them to stop approaching even when fire is introduced to the situation. It does appear to slow their movements, if only for reasons related to human physiology. Li pelts everyone she can with it until the route to escape is nearly blocked off, then throws it in the direction of a puddle of something leaking out of a parked car and sprints on all fours inbetween the legs of other infected.

There is no concept of self-preservation beyond staying intact enough to continue to fight. Some infected strikes her back with something and she lashes out with each leg in turn, kicking hard enough to force the man backwards as she forces herself forward towards Donatello, a blur of black hair and white collared shirt and red, flashing eyes.

She makes it back onto her feet and has a knife drawn when the fire connects with something much more volatile than a tranq, and a plume of fire emerges from somewhere back ten feet from the two non-infected fighters.

This will slow the herd. This will not win the day in and of itself unless they capitalize on it.

Donatello runs through calculations, the number of approaching infected, estimated speed, the things they've armed themselves with. It's the leaf blowers that are the most concern, that's a new one and it's startling as he realizes they're getting smarter with their intent to spread the spores. The numbers aren't favorable for one turtle but breaking things down helps him not to lose his nerve as he prepares himself for contact.

Only something else makes contact with them first. Li's form is practically a blur but it doesn't take long for him to identify her. Her head-on assault effectively draws the attention of those who had been on the move, simultaneously forcing them back as she brandishes her makeshift torch at them.

Donnie finally throws himself towards the fight, knocking one of the infected forwards with his staff while they're distracted. He raises it in time to catch the blade of a butcher's knife, giving his weapon a reverse spin to knock it away before twisting his staff upwards to strike the knife's wielder in the chin. There's Li, a bit of a daunting sight herself as she comes towards him at full speed. Donnie's eyes flick past her as he sees the man with the leaf blower hold up a glob of a spore-ridden mass out in front of the thing's nozzle, sending a thick cloud outwards.

"Oh no you don't..!" he says, thrusting a hand outwards. Lines of glowing purple trace shapes at either side of him, giant propellers in industrial-sized frames, a pair of huge fans that immediately power on. One might say he's overdoing it just a bit, but there's never any such thing as overkill his book, and at least by then Li's out of its radius as gusts buffet against the infected, blowing the spores back, just as something explodes.

"...okay, so the fiery tornado was not a part of my plan."

There are no nerves to be lost on her end. Creatures don't feel fear. They just act. Li is not nervous. Right now she is not anything but a weapon, existing in service to the mission. She moves at top speed and finds herself positioned beside Donatello, drawing a knife to act as back-up aid when it's needed - because it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when.

Before they can even get to that point, though, Donatello does something she can't quite process and then, abruptly, everything is various degrees of singed. Thankfully not everything is actually on fire, since the cars and buildings aren't flammable, but the people definitely are. Something about the spores seems to still be effecting their judgment, since being set on fire would fell any normal person and these people are, rather than making any move to put themselves out, still encroaching. Li slides into position, balancing the weight of her feet on her toes as she gets ready to move at any moment, unable to predict how this will go.

A figure staggers forward. Li darts out, quick as lightning, slips under and around his fiery arms, and once she's behind him it's over in a flash of metal across his neck before she kicks him over and promptly returns to Donatello's side. They're not going to get through this quickly, but she has the endurance to go through them all eventually, especially with Donatello's help. The light in her eyes is at peak brightness, red overtaking the black of pupils entirely. The odds aren't phasing her. That's not new, for her. What Donatello might notice is new is the silence, the stillness, the unnatural lack of an expression.

She waits for orders or an attack. She does not respond to words.

She is a Creature, not a companion.

"Funny, one would think a wall of flames would suitably dissuade further advancement." His tone is dry but in truth he finds nothing humorous about the situation. Somehow watching people on fire still insistently plodding through the flames toward them is even more disturbing than when they were just armed with general tools and clods of mushroom. Maybe not quite as awful as alien-possessed and mutated, but it's rapidly working its way up there.

"Well at least the spores should be taken care of," Donatello notes, trying to find something positive to all this. The fans flicker and vanish, but the flames continue to burn, just no longer whipped around. He's trying to fill the space of otherwise lacking banter, unsure what to make of whatever mode Li's settled into. It's eerie, and the only reassuring thing is that she's on his side.

"Li, I'm going for the fire hydrant! I don't know how long their bodies will keep up after getting toasted, but so long as they continue moving while on fire, that'll just cause a whole other set of problems. Might even be able to knock the rest of them back if I can redirect the flow." He points towards the hydrant in question, at the edge of the intersection where fiery forms still painfully weave their way around the singed cars. "Cover me!"

Humanoid. Not fully human anymore, but not like the aliens she knows. More a modified rendition of a human than anything. It follows not all of the weaknesses from before remain in place. Conclusion: wait for orders. Continual improvising is not the way through this and is not what she exists to do. She doesn't so much as tilt her head to get the stray strands of hair out of her eyes, though those eyes do still track movement and watch as the mob approaches.

Spores neutralized - no further hindrance to proceeding. Fire contained, if not allowed to move indoors. Li shifts up onto the tips of her tiptoes like a ballet dancer, briefly attempting to gain a better view, but the flames obscure it, and she shifts back to her old defensive posture. Every muscle is tense, shoulders slightly raised, ready to strike when incentivized to do so. What she needs now are orders to follow. Her mind simply does not have anything preloaded in there that would tell her how to fight this fight otherwise, so she's slipped out of that mindset and into something more efficient, more easily commanded and directed.

She nods exactly once. "Wǒ míngbai." And then she's off, hopping atop a car and slashing at the hands that reach out to her with such ruthless efficiency and sheer force as to take some fingers off, hopping off the car to slam full-body into a woman and send her careening into several other people, then launching herself on all fours back up onto the car, braced and ready to dive at anything that comes inbetween Donatello and his destination.

Cover is something she knows how to do. She can and will carry out this order or die trying.

He'll take that as an affirmative, practically moving simultaneously as Li does. Donatello leaps and slides over the hood of another car, wincing at the lingering heat. The fire that's engulfed the one car is still large enough that he can feel the considerable difference in the temperature from where he'd been standing and where he goes now.

The fire hydrant in his focus, he trusts Li to do her part while he closes in. He brings his bo over his head as it glows to form one of his most preferred alterations, a huge mallet. Down he swings it, the hydrant's nozzle showing little resistance as it knocks it clean off, water gushing forth immediately. The water knocks away another person as they make a lunge for Li, and Donnie makes use of his mystic tech to create something of a funnel as he hops up on top of the fire hydrant, shifting it back and forth to wash out the other threats.

"Li, fall back!" he calls out towards her, not wanting to catch her in the process.

Creature mode doesn't come with a language lock in theory, but in practice, she does have a bit of a default. Fortunately it doesn't impact her ability to work with him; she rips out the throat of an infected woman who starts to lurch towards them, burnt but not on fire, before throwing the body at an infected child. The smaller form goes down under the weight of the larger one easily. Turning, she takes out a second knife and uses both to slice at the hands and wrists of a man who, by virtue of losing his shirt, is only partially on fire. A sick smell fills the air from where his skin underneath is crackling. She can feel the heat of his body even as it breaks down when she grabs him by the broken wrists as he lunges forward, sending him careening into other people. The best way to handle a crowd is to use their own size against them rather than eliminating each and every target individually.

The sound of water has her spinning, instinctively reacting to the sound, but before she can even process that she's under threat Donatello has the threat neutralized. She has yet to shift into any other expression. It looks even more wrong than it normally does amid infected who are frothing - well, spore-ing - at the mouth. She nods at the order and scrambles up a streetlight and then onto the side of a building. Her blood-slick gloves nearly don't stick the landing correctly as she grips the windowsill, but she manages, pulling herself up and sitting perched in the open window while he does his part of the plan.

She watches with uncomprehending eyes, sitting with legs tensed as if awaiting an order. She does not call out any words back to him.

The clean efficiency of a team that was on the same page. Under normal circumstances, Donatello would revel in it. As the team thinker he liked having at least some kind of a plan going into things, but those plans only worked so well as the people executing them. He's learned to be a lot more lenient in planning and execution, particularly when it came to working with his brothers. Here he's just glad that he doesn't have to argue or reason anything out just to make sure he won't compromise his ally's position.

Yet there's still something weird about it. Maybe it's Li's silence that's off-putting, not helping to disperse the tension in the air where chatter from his brothers would otherwise have been non-stop. Dare he say it, he almost misses Leo's terrible puns. Donnie catches a glimpse of Li where she's taken to perch, definitely resembling something more feral than human at the moment. He pushes that thought aside, focusing on his task, grunting as he directs the jet of water back and forth across the intersection before letting it spew at the smoldering car until the thick black smoke turns gray.

The outlines of his mystic tech flicker out as he staggers back from the fire hydrant, the turtle teen breathing out a sigh as he looks for any further movement. The only signs of such are twitching bodies on the floor and the water pooling in the street.

"I...I think we're clear."

Missions are best accomplished with the right tools. Creatures are effective tools because they do not feel fear or fear death. This prevents hesitation and provides handlers with more control. It is not the same thing as being on a team, in the same way that a hammer or a screwdriver is not part of a team, merely an implement to be utilized under the right conditions.

The handler orders. The Creature acts. This is the way it has always been. ("This is the way millions of Creatures will be," the High Master had said, not to her - one does not speak to a hammer or a screwdriver, after all - but to one of his human allies, one of the ones working to sell out humans to the Inchoate in exchange for power. "This is how we have conquered galaxies." And none of the Lis present spoke, or looked offended, or moved from their assigned positions by exits and windows. They merely watched, red eyes catching the low light even without movement, like glass doll eyes.)

Clear. All-clear, that means no hostiles on the ground. Return to handler. She jumps back onto the streetlight and slides down it, landing safely on the ground, and dutifully comes over to his side, where her ability to contextualize his words into orders ends. Normally, this would be where a handler says a phrase to yank her mind out of Creature mode. Normally, though, she's not with a near-stranger she's just met. The trained part of her tells her to wait for orders. The Creature part tells her not to venture away from the only capable fighter/non-hostile she has met.

So Li ends up standing silently beside him, still and quiet as can be, not even moving to shake the hair out of her eyes or remove the strand of hair plastered to her cheek by smeared blood. Her button up shirt is partially torn at the left shoulder, revealing both her bra strap and the beginnings of what's going to be a horrific bruise. She does not so much as twitch as if contemplating picking the gravel out of the wound or moving the fabric.

Her eyes don't so much meet his as they just process that he's there. All the lights are on, but only a Creature is home.

It's a gruesome sight, bodies both still and twitching, wet and in various states of charred or dismemberment. Donatello feels that nausea starting to creep up on him again, and he turns away once he's satisfied that there aren't any more infected sneaking in behind the smokescreen. Looking to Li and meeting that gaze of her however does little to unwind the knot in his stomach.

"Hey..."

The lack of a response from her is worrying. It's like a switch had been flipped and she'd gone into some kind of battle mode. Is this that alien bit of her? That negligible one sixty-fourth? He swallows, not liking the implications. His eyes skip across her as he tries to gauge injuries, wincing at the discoloration of her shoulder as he barely halts his hand from resting there, instead switching hands to set one upon he right shoulder instead, giving her a light shake. "Li? Are you all right?" Please, please be in there somewhere, he can't deal with this!

"...Xiaohu?"

That she doesn't react to him starting to reach for an injury is a testimony to the power of conditioning. The hand on her shoulder gets a flicker of her gaze towards it, but only for a split second. She does not move away from the touch. Humans and aliens alike come out of conditioning like this. The difference is that humans usually break outright during the conditioning process, either dying or killing themselves. That negligible one sixty-fourth makes a slight difference somewhere internally that's at least kept that thought from crossing her mind.

She hears the question but does not correctly parse it. Status update? "No major injuries to report." Is that what he was asking about? That's what would make sense, for a handler to inquire about the status of something so as to know how to properly utilize it. Her voice is flat and toneless, devoid of emotion.

And then he says her name.

It takes her a moment to come out of it. She squints. Xiaohu. 小虎. Little tiger. Somewhere in the depths of memories that were supposed to be trained out of her remains the memory of someone talking to her, holding her in his arms so she could be up high enough to see the altar to Guanyin clearly. The memory has enough sensory information attached to it to haul her back out of this - the warmth of the person (her father?) holding her, the scent of incense, the rich colors of the statue and light reflecting off of the porcelain - and like someone waking up, she blinks, shakes her head, and looks around. She turns her head from side to side, taking everything in, before returning her gaze to Donatello.

"I'm okay, Donatello. I, ah. I'm sorry, if I worried you." This time, there's an actual expression on her face, that of mild unease, and actual emotion in her voice. It's equal parts uncertainty and anxiety that she's about to have to explain this. She blinks again, and then reaches for her left shoulder with her right hand to start trying to brush gravel out of it. Abruptly, she stops mid-motion, alarm crossing over her face not for that shift in and out of Creature mode, but for something else. "The civilians - we need to get back to them, they don't know what's going on and they've just seen smoke and explosions from our direction."

Because clearly their confusion is the confusion to prioritize, here.

The turtle starts to shake his head; that wasn't what he meant even if the response is something he'd expected. It's when something starts to seep in, to melt the almost doll-like exterior that relief floods Donatello's own expression. His shoulders sag as he watches Li come to, simply glad she hadn't shifted into something and gotten stuck.

"Glad you're back. I-" No, it's probably not something to discuss right now. He's juggling with unfamiliar and unsettling emotions and there's plenty enough on his plate as it is. Boxing them up internally as best he can, he nods as he looks back towards where they'd left the people they'd been escorting.

"Yeah, good call. Hope some of them have at least kept moving." And that no more infected had found their way around the group while they'd been preoccupied. He starts to turn, pausing to look back and make sure Li's really all right to move.

She's been stuck before. It's never permanent - she's not sure it can be - but in a pinch she can go as long as her handler demands, assuming she doesn't lose consciousness. Sleep or being knocked out returns her back to being herself, no matter what. This should, in theory, be the point where she realizes this whole thing isn't making sense by the rules of how she herself works. But she's too dazed to make the connection.

Li ducks her head, looking uncomfortable even though it's evident from the slumping of her shoulders and the sigh she gives off that she's not surprised by this. She would tell him something if she knew what to say, but she doesn't, so she can't. Instead she just takes a deep breath and tries to keep it together. Later. They can talk about this later, when no one is in danger. "Gǎnxiè nǐ, Donatello. Thank you." She reaches out and touches his hand briefly, a small smile fleetingly crossing her face despite the heaviness of everything.

She walks behind him, footsteps not as silent or fluid as they had been before but eyes still sharp and focused. There's an aching in her shoulder she knows will likely get worse as time goes on. It's nothing that indicates anything is broken, though, so she keeps moving, glancing at him a few times as if wanting to say something but not being quite able to work up the nerve.

The silence is painfully awkward, though. In spite of her own inability to fully process the situation, she blurts out quietly and quickly, "I'm sorry if I frightened you. I - I was never going to hurt you, though. I would never."

Even Creatures are only programmed to eliminate threats. And much as she knows she's not really a person the way he is, she doesn't like the idea of him being uncomfortable around her or wary of her. She's not a risk to everyone and everything. Those are Monsters, and she was thankfully too old when she was taken to be trained to be one of those. She's not fully human. She's not harmless. But she is still herself, at the end of the day, and she's not evil. Or at least, she hopes she isn't.

Have to head to bed now. Sorry!

Goodnight!

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